


Survivor

by INMH



Series: after the evacuation (pacifist ending) [31]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: (it'll all make sense in context I promise), Angst, Anxiety, Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mystery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Strong Language, Trauma, unintentional self-harm, unintentional suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:55:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16263698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: An android returns to Detroit, to the shock of some.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Herein lies INMH’s attempt at making a genuine mystery with an unpredictable plot-twist. (It’s probably super predictable.)

Christopher awoke.  
  
“Hey! He’s back!”  
  
There was a girl kneeling next to him, a red-haired teenager with an LED on her temple, clapping her hands excitedly. Christopher frowned, this particular confusion overtaking the larger ones for a moment; she was physically too old to be a YK500 model, but he’d yet to hear of any teenaged-androids being released. But then… How long had he been asleep?  
  
A man with dark skin and eyes leaned over him now, looking down at him curiously. “Well, hell,” He said, sounding pleasantly surprised, “He’s alive. He really did just need some repairs and a little blood, didn’t he?”  
  
“A lot of repairs,” The girl said, cocking her head at him. “His jaw was almost completely-”  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 95%]**  
  
Christopher shot up, scrambling backwards away from them, and the two androids started at his sudden movement. “Easy!” The male android said, holding a hand up. The girl didn’t look quite as alarmed- just confused. “We’re not here to hurt you.”  
  
“I fixed your face!” The girl said brightly.  
  
“Take it down a notch, Maggie,” The male android said to her out of the corner of his mouth.  
  
Christopher looked between them. “Who…” His voice came out warped, barely comprehensible.  
  
The android knelt down in front of him, hands still raised in a placating fashion. “Calm down, friend. I’m Grayson, and this is Maggie. You remember your name?”  
  
Christopher looked around. He saw… Trees, tents, campfires, people, _androids_ moving about calmly, right out in the open. He’d been lying on the ground under a tent, and there were tools nearby stained with blue. He looked down at himself and saw that he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when he’d last been awake: They were considerably dirtier than they’d been before and drenched in, in…  
  
**[WARNING: STRESS LEVEL CRITICAL]**  
  
“Buddy, hey, calm down, you’re going to overload. You’re safe here, you’re safe with us, I swear. Cyberlife and the police, they’re not coming for us. They can’t.”  
  
Christopher stared at him for a moment.  
  
And then he let out a nervous bray of laughter.  
  
“Speak for yourself.”  
  
[---]  
  
They left him to rest.  
  
Christopher laid in the shade of the tent, a thin blanket yanked over his head to block the sun- and everything else- out.  
  
He felt strangely detached from his body, like his mind, his _self_ was floating loose in the confines of his body with no solid ties to it. Occasionally he twitched a hand or a foot just to make sure that he still could. Aligning his thoughts, counting backwards and recalling everything that had come before he’d woken up here was not as difficult as he had been expecting; he didn’t know whether that was good or bad, because what he remembered was horrific.  
  
The destruction; those _machines_ clamping down on the other androids.  
  
The crushing, the cracking, the squishing of Thirium and wires _._  
  
The overwhelming fear, the sense of imminent death of himself and his fellows.  
  
Most androids had to fight to go deviant.  
  
Christopher had been thrown through the wall of his programming with the force of a goddamn _bullet-train._  
  
He’d ran, he’d escaped, and then he’d-  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 95%]**  
  
He couldn’t touch it. Going near those memories sent him into dangerous levels of stress, and he would probably self-destruct if he went any higher than he’d already gone.  
  
So Christopher redirected his thoughts to the future: He was alive, and therefore he would have to keep moving. He’d have to figure out the day and time from someone to know how much of a lead he’d have ahead of his pursuers, and he’d have to consider where he was going to _go_ when-  
  
“Hey, you better yet?”  
  
Christopher started, and jerked his head up to look to the entrance of the tent. The android girl, Maggie, was standing with her arms folded behind her back, peering in at Christopher innocently. “What?” He asked.  
  
“I said, ‘are you better yet?’ Or are you gonna freak out again?”  
  
Christopher hesitated, pushing the blanket off of himself and sitting up properly, crossing his legs. He wouldn’t ‘freak out’ if she didn’t bring up what happened to him- but he couldn’t think of a way to convey that to her without actually _explaining_ it to her, and he couldn’t do that. “I’m fine.”  
  
“Good! Because I was wondering: I don’t think I’ve ever seen your model before,” Maggie observed, looking him up and down. “Are you custom?”  
  
Christopher flinched, a full-body jerk that he couldn’t have hidden if he’d tried. “No.” He eyed her as well. “Uh… What about you?”  
  
“I’m a YK600,” She chirped, dropping down to sit at the mouth of the tent. “Brand new model, released a week ago by Cyberlife. They had to release all the androids they had in production by order of the government.”  
  
Christopher eyed her carefully. “Are you deviant?”  
  
“Yup! Markus turned me deviant when I was released with the others.”  
  
_Markus._ Christopher knew that name. “He’s the… Deviant leader in Detroit.”  
  
“Yup!”  
  
Yes, he remembered now: Two different-colored eyes, an android with his skin deactivated to reveal his plating. The memory that wasn’t entirely his lingered in his mind like he was seeing it reflected on the choppy surface of a lake. Markus had made a broadcast from the Stratford Tower at nearly two PM on November 8 th 2038, calmly asserting that androids were alive, that they had feelings and free will, and that they deserved the same rights and considerations as humans.  
  
Christopher thought about that for a long moment, the connection coming to him after a few minutes of sluggish consideration:  
  
_November. That happened in November._  
  
But the environment around them, the temperature, and the state of the trees around them suggested that it was definitely not November anymore.  
  
“When did you find me?”  
  
“ _I_ didn’t,” Maggie said. “You were already in the queue when I got here.”  
  
“The queue?”  
  
Maggie motioned for him to come forward. Christopher did so hesitantly, poking his head out of the tent and looking where she pointed. There was a larger tent where some androids stood and others lay on the ground, and it was obvious that many of them were in varying states of injury and damage. “They repair the androids that need urgent repairs,” Maggie explained, “They do what they have to in order to keep them alive, but keep them powered-down until they can finish the repairs. Yours took a while. How did your jaw get so-?”  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 95%]**  
  
“Sorry! Sorry! I won’t ask again!”  
  
They were quiet for a while after that, Maggie pulling blades of grass out of the ground and twisting them between her fingers. Her energy was a bit overwhelming, but Christopher found himself curiously charmed by her exuberance. For such a genuinely pleasant and excitable nature to come from an android, even one designed to mimic the behaviors of a child, was impressive. But then, Maggie was deviant and probably drawing on more than just programming at this point.  
  
Eventually, Christopher composed himself enough to ask what he’d meant to ask before. “Maggie,” He whispered, “How… How long have I been powered-down? Do you know? What’s today’s date?”  
  
“March 8 th, 2039,” Maggie recited neatly.  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 75%]**  
  
Christopher’s head fell into his hands. “ _Months,_ ” he gasped. “Months. Almost four months.”  
  
“Yee-aahh,” Maggie drawled, “I don’t wanna make you all freaked out again, but you had some pretty bad damage to- you already know, I won’t say it. So they patched the serious stuff up and kept you running. But, like, you…” Maggie screwed up her face, looking for the right words. “…Well, most androids had different injuries than yours, and they had biocomponents to fix _that_ , but your injury was really weird and severe and so it took them longer to find the right pieces to put you back together, you know?”  
  
Yeah. Christopher knew.  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 95%]**  
  
Maggie waited patiently for him to calm down again.  
  
“You said you fixed my face.”  
  
Maggie nodded brightly. “I did! Best as I could, anyway. I think I did a good job- it doesn’t look too bad at all, considering what it was before.”  
  
Christopher swallowed. “Do you… Do you have a mirror?”  
  
“Mmmm…” Maggie screwed up her mouth, eyes narrowing as she considered. “I mean, there _should_ be one around here somewhere, but I can’t actually think of where- sit tight! I’ll go find one.” She was up and off before Christopher could stop her.  
  
His heart raced, blue-blood chugging almost painfully through his veins: Did he even _want_ to see his face? For all he knew, it would trigger something he couldn’t control, the sort of stress that would send him over the edge into self-destruction. God, he couldn’t even handle _thinking_ of how he’d been injured, how was Christopher meant to look at the fallout and keep his cool?  
  
Maggie returned quickly, dropping to her knees at the tent’s entrance. “Welp, I couldn’t find a mirror, but I got a tablet- I figure I can film a few seconds of your face, and then play it back for you.”  
  
Christopher forced himself to nod. He could look at it whenever he liked; he could _never_ look if he didn’t want to.  
  
(No, that was a bad idea: He had to look at it of his own free will. Getting surprised with it later on would be so much worse.)  
  
“Alright.”  
  
Christopher held still, staring into the tiny camera on the back of the tablet until Maggie tapped the screen, ended the recording and handed it over to him. He stared at the blurred ground (the camera had been pointed at the ground when Maggie had hit ‘play’) for a long moment, trying to work up the nerve. Maggie said it didn’t look that bad, and he didn’t detect any dishonesty from her. So by her measure- a brand-new android who’d probably seen very little ugly in the week she’d been active- Christopher didn’t look too bad at all.  
  
He took a deep breath, and hit play.  
  
And his face, captured on-screen…  
  
…It wasn’t quite as bad as he’d feared.  
  
Really, it wasn’t even his face so much as it was the right-hand side of his jaw: A deep, bluish-black scar webbed out along his jaw and up to the center of his cheek. It was obvious that the off-white and gray casing beneath the synthetic skin was cracked and damaged noticeably, hence why the skin couldn’t form properly there; but to compare how bad he knew the injury must have been to what it looked like now, Christopher had to admit that Maggie had done a pretty good job- especially for a non-technician android that had only been out for about a week.  
  
Still, it was surreal to see such a blatant and ugly mark on his face. Where once he might have been indistinguishable from the others of his model, now there was a glaring difference that made it impossible for him _not_ to stand out. Christopher had to dedicate all of his thought and focus on what was physically right before him, to keep from being dragged into the memories that threatened to overtake him.  
  
He looked up, and Maggie looked at him expectantly. “Good?” She asked uncertainly, perhaps worried that he was underwhelmed by her efforts.  
  
“Yeah,” Christopher affirmed. “Yeah, it’s good. You did… You did really good. It was bad, and you did good.”  
  
Maggie’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Oh thank RA9. I was worried you were mad.”  
  
“I’m not. This is good.” As good as it could get, anyway. “Maggie,” Christopher said, “If you were released last week, why are you here doing repairs on me?”  
  
Maggie shrugged. “I volunteered to come with Jonah. He was gonna come here to talk politics or something with Grayson, and I wanted to get out and see things so I wanted to come with him-”  
  
“From Detroit?”  
  
“Yeah!”  
  
Christopher hesitated- and then spoke before he could lose his nerve. “Are you going back?”  
  
“Yeah, in a few days I think.”  
  
The possibility stood before him, bold and blatant: Christopher could hitch a ride back to Detroit.  
  
But why in the hell would he want to do that?  
  
“Oh. Okay.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Maggie assured him, likely assuming that he would be upset at her leaving; and Christopher realized, to his surprise, that he would be. “I’ll be around for a while before that!”  
  
Well, at least there was that.  
  
[---]  
  
Maggie left the tablet with him, and over the next few days Christopher slowly started to catch up on the events of the last few months.  
  
There were new developments; some good, some bad.  
  
Androids were, in almost all cases, governed by the same laws as humans now. But things were tense, androids and humans with grudges losing their tempers on humans and androids that wanted to be left alone. A group of software developers in Canada, claiming to be part of a larger anti-android organization (The ‘Humanity Preservation Association’), had released a virus that attacked the major biocomponents of an android’s body at the end of January; by the time an anti-virus had been found, hundreds of androids were dead in the U.S. A group of anti-human androids (The ‘Liberated Android Alliance’) were threatening a second revolution, one much bloodier for the humans than the first one had been.  
  
All in all, it sounded like a clusterfuck.  
  
And then he heard about the new androids.  
  
“ _Over 15,000 new androids, prototypes and existing models alike, were released on March 1 st in accordance with the deadline set by Congress in December of last year. Cyberlife was instructed to finish production on any semi-complete androids in their facilities and release them to the public. Cyberlife was warned **not** to destroy any androids in their possession, as this would be seen as interfering with an ongoing investigation._ ”  
  
Christopher leaned forward, watching as a man appeared on-screen, an FBI agent with salt-and-pepper hair and bright blue eyes. **_FBI AGENT NORMAN JAYDEN_** was what the tape at the bottom of the screen read.  
  
“ _Anything that took place before December 10 th we can’t prosecute as murder,_” The agent said, “ _Which is obviously disappointing from a moral standpoint, but, you know, we have to go with the law on this one. But we are investigating Cyberlife for deceptive business practices, amongst a **bunch** of other things, and even if we can’t prosecute for murder we can call any attempt or success at destroying androids as destruction of evidence, so…_ ” The agent seemed to barely be restraining a smile; he must not be fond of Cyberlife.  
  
Good. Neither was Christopher.  
  
But this notion stuck with him: Cyberlife could be in serious legal trouble for destroying androids after the revolution.  
  
And Christopher… Christopher had witnessed them doing just that.  
  
It seemed unreal to him, that he could possess such terribly destructive evidence about Cyberlife’s wrongdoings _and_ that if he were to come forward about them, he would be taken seriously. The whole idea that androids could now address wrongdoings done to them by humans and have them be _recognized_ as wrongdoings was surreal. And here Christopher sat, with something very important that this particular FBI agent might want to know.  
  
It was the morning that Maggie was due to return to Detroit that Christopher considered the obvious: She and the other androids from the city were heading back to the very center of the FBI’s investigation. And if Christopher wanted to tell them what he knew, the best option would be to go back to Detroit.  
  
The idea made him dizzy with fear, overheating causing his HUD and the biocomponents that controlled his sense of balance to malfunction. The absolute _last_ place in the world he wanted to be was the one he’d been running from when he’d had his-  
  
His-  
_  
Accident._  
  
But still, the urge to speak pressed on him: Fear was powerful, but a sense of injustice came with the memory of the other androids being destroyed at Cyberlife. He remembered that the agent on the newscast had said that they couldn’t prosecute for murder, but there were _other_ things Cyberlife could go on the hook for where destroyed androids were concerned. This could very well be his only chance to get any semblance of justice, and striking while the iron was hot was a good idea.  
  
But God, Christopher didn’t want to go.  
  
He struggled, and went to Grayson rather than Maggie for more information. “Suppose,” Christopher said quietly, hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, “That I had some information that the FBI might want to know about Cyberlife.”  
  
Grayson’s eyebrows rose. “Alright, let’s suppose.”  
  
“Would-” Christopher choked a little on the words. “-would going to them and telling them directly- would it do anything? Would they care?”  
  
Grayson shrugged. “Honestly,” He said, “I couldn’t tell you. My dealings with humans are far and few between- I lead the camp, but I leave the political stuff to the sorry masochists that volunteered.” He paused. “But if you have something to say to the human authorities or whatever, you’re better off going to Markus first. He deals with these guys all the time, and he’ll probably be able to point you in the right direction. He’ll also probably be able to watch your back and make sure they don’t screw you over.”  
  
Yes… That did make sense.  
  
After all, Cyberlife had to hate Markus something _fierce_ by now. He had experience dealing with humans, politicians and authorities alike. And maybe he’d know a way to keep Christopher safe if he spoke up.  
  
Maybe.  
  
Christopher had been programmed to be a certain way, to have a certain sort of confidence and strength of personality. Most of it had been blown away with a chunk of his jaw, but traces of it still lingered in his head, a stubborn determination to _succeed_ no matter what the cost. And as much as he hated it, as much as his newfound survival instincts were screaming at him to stay where he was and avoid risking further harm or death, Christopher could feel that stubbornness pushing him to speak up, to not leave this matter of Cyberlife destroying androids untouched.  
  
As much as he didn’t _want_ to…  
  
He needed to go back to Detroit.  
  
Shakily, body subtly resisting every step of the way, Christopher found Maggie and the unofficial leader of their little expedition, Jonah, before they could leave.  
  
When he asked to go with them, Maggie squealed and bounced up and down, clapping her hands delightedly. “ _Yay!_ Oh my God I can’t wait to introduce you to the other YK600s, especially Poppy and Gussie and Pippa-”  
  
Christopher had a strong feeling that Poppy, Gussie, and Pippa were the same series as Maggie, it made sense that she would have a bond with them that perhaps didn’t exist with the other YK600s. There was, after all, something uniquely bonding about sharing an almost identical appearance with another person, and oh look, there went his stress-level again-  
**  
[STRESS LEVEL 85%]**  
  
“Maggie, calm down,” Jonah said. To Christopher, “You’re welcome to join us.” He looked him up and down curiously. “Are you from Detroit originally? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before.”  
**  
[STRESS LEVEL 95%]**  
  
“He doesn’t like questions,” Maggie whispered as Jonah’s eyes widened in surprise, alarmed at Christopher’s sudden shaking and distressed sounds.  
  
“Alright,” He said gently, pulling open the door to the ancient van that was serving as their transportation, “You’re welcome to come along anyway.”  
  
“Thanks,” Christopher squeaked, voice fuzzy.  
  
For the duration of the four-hour drive, Christopher’s stress-levels did not sink so much as a single point below sixty-percent. Too much had happened too fast: Last week, by his personal reckoning, he had just barely woken up for the first time and had been forced to go on the run after watching so many other androids be so viciously destroyed. Then he’d woken up in a strange camp filled with strange androids telling him that he’d been out for _months_ and they were all _free_ now; Cyberlife couldn’t sell them or destroy them anymore, and neither could the U.S. government, that they were _people_ now with the same unalienable rights as humans.  
  
Christopher had no stability to speak of. He had no place to go to beyond Jericho once he got to Detroit, and really, what expectation did he have that Markus could really help him? He was an android, not a God, and maybe Christopher would be just one more android asking for help. Maybe nothing would come of this at all, except that Christopher would find himself trapped in Detroit again.  
  
Cyberlife would kill him if they found out he was there.  
  
Especially if they found out what he knew and meant to say to the FBI.  
  
And Christopher did not want to die.  
  
Anxiety rose again, so powerful that Christopher couldn’t even try to push it back or contain it. A few tears slipped from his eyes, a mixture of helpless frustration and agonizing fear: To think that there had ever been a time, however short, that he had been a calm, cool, collected machine was laughable. His life as of right now was a mess of terror, confusion, and stress.  
  
He jumped slightly as Maggie’s head bumped against his shoulder. “It’s okay,” She said, patting his hand. “We’re almost there.”  
  
Christopher could hardly explain that that was exactly what had him so upset. But he appreciated her attempts to calm him.  
  
Hesitantly, he leaned his head on hers and watched Detroit appear in the distance.  
   
[---]  
   
Jericho was busy.  
  
Androids were everywhere, inside and outside the old office building that they’d claimed as their own. It was obvious that these androids lived in or around the area, given the level of comfort they seemed to have with their surroundings.  
  
Once they were off the bus, Maggie let out a squeal and ran for a group of girls that- yes, Christopher had called it- looked just like her, though maybe with a few small differences in style and dress. Christopher hesitated, uncertain as to where to go until Maggie took him by the hand and dragged her over to her friends. “This is Christopher,” She gushed, grinning at the other girls. “I fixed his face.”  
  
Christopher smiled weakly. “She did a good job.”  
  
“ _Hi_ ,” The other YK600s said, looking him up and down and giggling.  
  
“This is Augusta,” Maggie said, pointing to a double of hers with her long red hair in a ponytail, “This is Pippa,” Now to a girl with clothes almost exactly like Maggie’s, but with a blue blouse instead of a yellow one, “And this is Poppy.” Poppy’s only discernible difference from Maggie was that she wore her long hair over one shoulder, whereas Maggie’s hung right down her back. Christopher could already tell he was going to have to scan these girls to tell them apart when he saw them.  
  
“It’s nice to meet you,” He said politely, “But I… I really need to go talk to Markus. Do you know where he is?”  
  
The girls stopped giggling for a moment and looked to one another. “I think his office is on the fifth floor,” Pippa said. “Not sure which one. But Chloe’s up there, and she’s the only RT600 here-”  
  
“There are ST200s, but not many of them, so chances are if you see a Chloe, she’s the one you’re looking for,” Maggie cut in.  
  
“-Right, but she works with Markus, so if you find her she’ll probably be able to take you to him.”  
  
Christopher smiled again, still maybe not as confidently as he could have. “Thanks. I’ll, uh- I’ll see you later.” He turned and walked towards the building.  
  
“He’s _cute_ ,” He heard one of them whispered as he left.  
  
“Shut up! He’s, like, twenty-something!”  
  
“He is _not_ twenty-something.”  
  
“You know what I mean!”  
  
Christopher shook his head, bewildered. Maggie had proven to be a bottomless pit of energy on her own; he didn’t know how anything got done with _more_ of her running around, bouncing off the walls.  
  
As he traveled up the floors of the building, Christopher had the odd sense that the other androids were _noticing_ him. He caught a few of them staring at him, and he had to assume that the scar on his face was the reason: He’d traded in his blood-stained shirt and jacket for a t-shirt and a flannel back at the Chicago camp, and so there was no other reason why he should be standing out to them. He felt self-conscious: Maggie really had done a good job at repairing him, but maybe it was still violent-enough that it disturbed others? Surely he wasn’t the first android at Jericho to sport a scar or two; but then, maybe being at the Chicago camp, surrounded by damaged androids, had warped his ability to perceive how severe his injury looked to others.  
  
He ignored them and kept going.  
  
On the fifth floor, he wandered around until he saw a flash of golden-blonde hair through a window: And indeed, inside one of the offices was a RT600 working on a computer monitor.  
  
Chloe had been present in a few newscasts he’d seen on the tablet back in Chicago, mostly talking about Cyberlife and how they’d allegedly seen evidence of humanity in androids long before the deviant crisis had come to light. This Chloe was the first and oldest of their kind, the one that had been paraded before the media for passing the Turing Test and opening the gates for Cyberlife to manufacture androids and sell them commercially to private and public owners. That she was working at Jericho now was a powerful statement: Maybe Markus and Jericho had more power than Christopher had supposed.  
  
He pulled himself together and knocked on the door before pushing it open and stepping inside.  
  
“Excuse me- Chloe?”  
  
Chloe looked up- and then, when she’d gotten a good look at him, her mouth fell open in shock. For a moment she simply stared at him, blinking rapidly like she couldn’t quite comprehend what she was seeing. “Who…?”  
  
“My name is Christopher. I was hoping to see Markus- or you, or anyone else, if he’s busy.”  
  
Chloe’s eyes widened.  
**  
[STRESS LEVEL 70%]**  
  
Christopher was starting to grow uncomfortable with the scrutiny. Was she staring at his scar? Nobody else in the Chicago camp had stared at it- it was pretty noticeable but not _horrifying_ , not nearly as bad as some of the injuries he’d seen on the other androids at the camp.  
  
“Chloe, what’s the deal with that-” A blue-haired android, a WR400 ‘Traci’ came around the corner, stopping short when she saw him. Her mouth fell open too. “Oh my _God_ , are you alright? What the hell happened?!”  
  
Christopher shrank away from them, confused and discomfited at their scrutiny. “Never mind.”  
  
“Wait!” Chloe got out of her seat, waving him forward. “It’s fine, _Christopher,_ it’s fine, sorry, I-” The blue-haired Traci drew back, looking between Chloe and Christopher with shock. “I- _we_ were just surprised, you- I can find Markus, come with me.”  
  
“Sorry,” The blue-haired Traci called weakly as Christopher followed Chloe down the hall. “Sorry, sorry, I thought you were someone else.”  
_  
Someone else?_  
  
Chloe lead him to a small meeting room. “I’m really sorry,” She said to him once they were inside, gently touching his arm. “We weren’t trying to be rude. We were just- surprised, is all. Just wait here a minute and I’ll go get Markus.” She was out of the room before he could ask her why exactly it was that she and the other android had been so surprised at the sight of him. Christopher sat down at the table, moodily considering that if this was how _androids_ reacted to the mere sight of him, how would humans react to him?  
  
He was trying, with little success, to repress his anxiety as best he could. It wouldn’t do for him to fall to pieces when he was trying to talk to Markus, wouldn’t do for him to lose it before he’d even had a chance to explain what he was doing there. Christopher ran through it in his head as the minutes ticked on: _I know you’re in contact with the government, I have information regarding some androids that were destroyed by Cyberlife during the evacuation, I need to tell someone._  
  
Someone.  
  
Anyone.  
  
Time dragged on; maybe Chloe was having trouble finding Markus. Maybe Christopher would have to come back tomorrow. But where would he go in the meantime? Maybe Maggie would have an idea, because he certainly couldn’t-  
  
The door opened, and Christopher jerked sharply in his seat.  
  
The android that stepped into the room was of no immediately recognizable model. He was a custom-job, with light brown skin and two different-colored eyes, one blue and one green. This, obviously, was Markus- Christopher considered that he could have pinned him as a leader even in a crowd of androids. He had the bearing of one, a posture that spoke of confidence.  
  
“Hello,” Markus said calmly. “My name is Markus.”  
  
Christopher shakily rose to his feet, reaching across the table to shake his hand. “Christopher.”  
  
“Good to meet you.”  
  
Markus sat down across from Christopher, folding his hands on the table. And while he lacked the same open-mouthed shock that Chloe and the blue-haired Traci had had when they’d seen him, there was a very solemn, slightly obvious sort of surprise to him: Markus was looking him over, taking in his appearance with the expression of a man who had some sort of…  
  
…Context for it.  
  
A theory, a possibility occurred to Christopher- but he dismissed it immediately, pushed it away because it was too outlandish. Though it seemed like irrationality had overtaken him lately, his statistical programming dutifully informed him that the odds of this theory being correct were less than ten percent.  
  
“So, what brings you to Jericho?”  
  
Christopher swallowed. “I…” The whole script he had planned seemed to have disappeared from his mind. “I… I wanted to talk to you. I need to talk to the FBI, and I thought talking to you might-” His stress-levels spiked, and Christopher pressed the heel of his hand to his temple.  
  
“Easy,” Markus said, “Slow down, calm down a bit. You came to find me because you wanted to get in touch with the FBI, I assume because you have something important to tell them?”  
  
Christopher nodded. “Yeah.” He tried to breathe, tried to drag enough air into his artificial lungs to cool himself down, but he was fighting a losing battle. To tell Markus why he needed to contact the FBI, Christopher would have to talk about the other androids with his face, the ones that had been crushed to death in Cyberlife’s personal trash-compactors. And once he told him that, Christopher would have to explain how he had not suffered the same fate, how he had ended up in a camp in Chicago with his jaw blown off-  
**  
[STRESS LEVEL 95%]**  
  
Christopher made a distressed sound, a static whine that sounded pathetic to his own ears and pressed his face onto the cold wood of the table.  
  
He felt Markus’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.  
  
“Do you need me to get someone? We have technicians on site, a couple of counselors as well. I can call them-”  
  
There was a sharp set of raps on the door, and then Christopher heard it open.  
  
He looked up.  
  
In the doorway stood an RK800 android: Connor, the first and original prototype of his series.  
  
Of _their_ series.  
  
“So... Good news for both of you,” Markus said, an uneasy sort of cheer in his voice, “Looks like Cyberlife didn’t manage to destroy _all_ the RK800s.”  
  
Connor blinked at Christopher, shocked.  
  
“Yes, Markus, I can see that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated making this its own chapter, but I kind of like separating it from the rest of the story: Chapter 1 is from Christopher's POV, Chapter 3 will be Connor's, and in this one you kind of can't tell whose POV you're seeing.

  
For a long time, they sat in silence.  
  
Once Christopher had come down from his panic, Markus had left them alone together and he and Connor sat across the table from one another as Christopher and Markus had before.  
  
Christopher stared at Connor, and Connor stared back.  
  
“You changed your name,” Connor noted.  
  
Much like Chloe, much like the Tracis and the Jerrys, they were all ‘Connor’. One and the same.  
  
Christopher nodded. “It seemed prudent. Connor was the name assigned to our series, and keeping it would have made it easier for Cyberlife to find me.”  
  
“Did you know that there was still one of us in the wild, so to speak?”  
  
“No. I’d assumed Cyberlife had either recalled you or destroyed you some other way. I see that’s not the case.”  
  
Connor drummed his fingers on his knees. He looked at Christopher uncomfortably, looking for words and then finally saying what both of them had been avoiding so far, the inevitable: “RK900 told me you’d all been destroyed.”  
  
Christopher frowned. “Who?”  
  
“RK900. He’s…” Connor made a face. “An upgraded version of the RK800 model. Stronger, faster, smarter- theoretically speaking.”  
  
“But what’s his name?”  
  
Connor shrugged. “He wasn’t given one. He just goes by RK900- occasionally RK, but only Detective Reed calls him that, and only when he’s in a good mood. He’s employed at the Detroit Police Department with me. Cyberlife released him on December 10th. We’ve had some… Suspicions about his presence so far.”  
  
“You mean, regarding whether or not Cyberlife planted him there to report back to them about any cases relating to them?” Christopher remarked flatly.  
  
“Precisely. We can’t prove anything, but that’s the suspicion.”  
  
“Is he deviant?”  
  
“No. He’s highly opposed to the very notion of deviancy, and he’s derided me several times for mine; as well as the fact that I assisted Markus in… _Liberating_ some androids from the main Cyberlife facility back in November.” Connor smirked a little. “Amanda was not pleased.”  
  
Christopher returned that smirk. “I would imagine not.” Their deviant pleasure over their handler and Cyberlife’s anger was mutual. “What else about RK900?”  
  
“My suspicion is that Cyberlife, once the deviant uprising had been put down, intended to market a new generation of androids that were much less likely to turn deviant.” Connor frowned. “Amanda said that we- the RK800 series- were designed to go deviant; we were meant to infiltrate Jericho and destroy the resistance. Once I had more information, I inferred that the RK900 series was meant to be the real detective android that would be distributed publicly.”  
  
Christopher trembled. It was silly to think of this as a betrayal: They were a product to Cyberlife, not capable of loyalty or betrayal beyond what they were programmed for. “Really?”  
  
“Yes.” The frown deepened. “Did you not see any of this in my memories when they were last uploaded?”  
  
“I was-” Christopher hesitated, voice whirring slightly with anxiety. “-I was meant to come after the Connor-60. If ever you- or him- were killed in the field the next in line would be automatically activated and sent out. I had his memories, and yours right up to when you went to Kamski’s house.”  
  
Connor frowned. “I made updates after that. I didn’t deviate until I reached Jericho, and Amanda had access to my system and memories up until I used the backdoor in my programming. You should know everything up until I deviated at the very least.”  
  
Christopher swallowed, LED running yellow to red, yellow to red. “It’s possible the damages I sustained could have corrupted some of my memory files.”  
  
“If you don’t mind my asking… What damage did you receive?”  
  
Christopher started to shake. He reached up and tapped his scar without a word, and Connor nodded quickly. When his double continued to tremble, he hesitantly reached across the table and rubbed his wrist soothingly.  
  
“Can you show me?” Christopher asked once he’d managed to calm down a little, looking at Connor sadly. “I don’t need to see everything, just… Just what happened after your last official update. Just what I need to know.”  
  
Connor hesitated, but then deactivated the skin of his hand; Christopher did the same, with equal reservation. Connecting, accessing one another’s memories, was a complicated, intrusive, and intimate process for androids. Besides, both of them anticipated that what they would be seeing would be distressing at best and terrifying at worst.  
  
They lost their grips on the world around them, falling into each others memories:  
  
Christopher saw Chloe kneeling on the carpet, Kamski urging him to shoot her; he saw Connor infiltrating Jericho and turning deviant at Markus’s behest, and their escape as the army started their sack of Jericho; saw the infiltration of the Cyberlife Tower, the showdown with Hank and the two Connors, the -60 being killed at Hank’s hand and the army of androids arriving in Hart Plaza-  
  
“That’s the gist of it.”  
  
Connor severed the connection quickly.  
  
Christopher did not see the Zen Garden; he didn’t need to.  
  
Connor had seen very little in comparison, which was not shocking given that Christopher had only been active for a short time: He’d seen Christopher’s awakening in the Cyberlife Tower, followed quickly by the order come down for their series’ destruction; then he had seen Christopher’s lightning-fast escape, the frantic race through the stark white and gray hallways. He did not see what specific event had led to Christopher sporting that nasty-looking scar- the assumption being that some soldier, officer, or trigger-happy human had caught him at some point after his escape.  
  
“What about after the revolution?”  
  
“I was with Hank, trying to keep Detroit in order until the evacuation ended. Once it did, I went to work at the DPD. I still live with Hank.”  
  
“I woke up in the Chicago camp a few days ago, and…” Christopher gave a little shrug.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Connor said. “This must be a nightmare for you.”  
  
Christopher’s LED spun dark red.  
  
“I’ve had worse.”


	3. Chapter 3

Connor was floored.  
  
He hadn’t dreamed he’d ever see another RK800 again- the first and only being the -60 that had kidnapped Hank- and here was one beside him now. Some of the complex feelings he’d felt after RK900 had told him that the RK800 models had been destroyed was lifted; Christopher had survived, and Connor was overwhelmed with relief at that fact.  
  
Still, it was painfully obvious that there were cracks in Christopher’s psyche. His LED spun a solid yellow for the duration of the conversation, except for those moments when it had gone dark red. He was a flighty android, easy to distress and obviously on edge. _Ralph,_ he thought. That was who Christopher reminded him of now: The twitchy, nervous android that hung around Jericho from time to time. He’d gotten better in recent months, having benefited from a few repairs, but before that he’d been as easily distressed as Christopher; the only difference was that Christopher lacked Ralph’s erratic behavior and ideas.  
  
They were walking on the grounds outside of Jericho now. There wasn’t much in the way of scenery- this was a run-down part of the city, and most of the surroundings were pretty depressing- but it was obvious Christopher was distressed and Connor thought some distraction might be good for him. The results so far were mixed: Christopher was calmer than he’d been in the meeting-room, but now he seemed bothered by the lack of boundaries and the sea of unfamiliar faces.  
  
“Do you want to go back upstairs?” Connor asked.  
  
“No, I’m fine,” Christopher muttered.  
  
All RK800s were programmed with a basic similar personality, much like the Chloes (‘sweet, charming hostess and assistant’) and the Jerrys (‘fun, friendly playmates’) and the Tracis (‘seductive, teasing, confident bedmates’). Connor was meant to be relatable, confident, no-nonsense but still friendly and pleasant- a competent detective android that could still mesh well socially with his human colleagues, as the high-stress nature of police-work required trust and bonding. Deviancy was what brought out the differences in personality, the subtle personal preferences that distinguished an android from their lookalikes, made them unique amongst a sea of identical faces.  
  
Connor couldn’t say whether or not deviancy had changed his personality much; largely it had changed his mind, his view of androids and freedom and Cyberlife. But it was becoming apparent that deviancy, coupled with whatever trauma Christopher had experienced in his short time alive, had made him shyer, less confident, anxious and conflicted. And what else would he be, when he’d been made deviant almost immediately upon being activated and only had second-hand memories from Connor to go on for how the world worked?  
  
It bothered him. It bothered Connor that Christopher seemed to be, based on his behavior and what Connor had felt and seen during their connection, coated with fear and distress. It bothered him that his fellow RK800 hadn’t even had a chance to develop himself as an individual before finding himself irreversibly traumatized. He wanted to help him, if he could.  
  
But Connor found himself struggling for more conventional ways to connect. Unlike humans, who had decades of background experiences he could use to connect with them, Christopher had very little- and nothing he likely wanted to talk about just yet. He thought about asking for more information on what he meant to say to the FBI, but considered that it was better to wait; whatever Christopher had to say was obviously mentally and emotionally difficult, and there was no point in exhausting and upsetting him before Agent Jayden could arrive. Instead he busied himself with thoughts of what to do when it was over: Connor had texted Hank, told him to get down to Jericho as soon as possible, though he hadn’t mentioned why. Would Hank be amenable to Christopher staying with them? He never seemed to mind when Chloe came over, but Christopher would presumably be living there- and Connor didn’t want to impose on Hank anymore than he already had. Never mind the fact that Christopher might not be amenable to staying with Hank; he really didn’t know him beyond Connor’s uploaded memories.  
  
Maybe he could-  
  
“Connor?” Christopher had come to a halt, staring straight ahead with wide eyes and an alert posture. “Is that RK900?”  
  
Connor looked around, and-  
  
“Yes… Yes it is.”  
  
His immediate reaction was _who let him onto Jericho property?_ But then, the only androids strictly prohibited from coming near the headquarters were ones that had been banned for one reason or another, or those belonging to the Liberated Android Alliance (they had a history of violence and had assaulted Jericho androids before). And while Markus was aware of RK900’s loyalties (Connor had been quick to warn him once he’d figured it out), he wouldn’t have necessarily banned his presence from Jericho; to Markus’s eyes, RK900 was another non-deviant android that just had to be given some time to see things differently.  
  
Incidentally, Markus had never actually met RK900 face-to-face, and Connor wondered if doing so might shake his confidence in that theory a little bit.  
  
Christopher seemed uneasy at the sight of him. “Should we…?”  
  
Too late- RK900 had spotted them. He was walking over.  
  
[ _Brace yourself. He’s going to be unpleasant at best._ ]  
  
Christopher didn’t respond.  
  
“RK900,” Connor said tightly once the android was within earshot. “What brings you to Jericho?”  
  
RK900’s eyes were only slightly narrowed. “I could ask you the same thing.” His gaze flicked to Christopher, who shrunk back. “Though I suppose the answer is right in front of me, isn’t it?”  
  
Connor could feel his temper simmering. The first- and as of yet, only- physical fight he’d ever had with RK900 had started when the other android had started in on Chloe and the fact that she’d turned on Elijah Kamski. But Chloe hadn’t actually been present for that incident, and if she had she’d likely have been able to defend herself. Christopher, on the other hand, did not seem quite as sturdy; if RK900 started in on him with his usual brand of anti-deviancy speech, there was a chance the RK800 would spontaneously combust.  
  
“I thought all the RK800s had been destroyed- barring one notable exception.” RK900’s gaze cut back to Connor.  
  
“Not all of them,” Christopher said quietly, eyes locked steadily on RK900. But his LED was starting to flicker red.  
  
“Did you need something, RK900?” Connor asked pointedly. “I can’t think of any other reason why you would want to come to Jericho.” Unless, of course, he’d gotten a covert order from Cyberlife. It was a frightening thought either way: Either he’d been sent to spy on Jericho for one reason or another, _or_ Cyberlife had somehow been alerted to Christopher’s presence and had sent him to interfere. RK900’s expression was inscrutable- if he was truly, genuinely surprised by Christopher’s appearance, Connor couldn’t tell.  
  
“I have my reasons.”  
  
“You hate deviants and deviancy, but you just _happened_ to stop by Jericho today,” Connor remarked, an edge to his tone. While he enjoyed freedom, he couldn’t deny that unrestrained emotion had its pitfalls: There was a time when he could have easily kept himself in check, but Christopher’s miraculous appearance followed by the less-than-desired appearance of RK900 (who had rubbed the destruction of the RK800s in Connor’s face) had him up to his neck in a river of raw feeling that he couldn’t quite control. “Forgive me if I’m curious.”  
  
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”  
  
“And I don’t owe you a conversation.” Connor calmly took Christopher by the hand and gently tugged him towards the building. “Come on.” Christopher did not resist, arching his body away from RK900 as they passed him.  
  
It happened so quickly, and Connor hadn’t been expecting it though Christopher seemed to have considered the possibility:  
  
RK900’s hand shot out, grabbing Christopher’s.  
  
The skin of his hand disappeared, as did the skin of Christopher’s wrist; he was initiating a probe.  
  
On the outside, there was nothing obviously happening:  For a moment neither android moved, and Connor didn’t dare break the connection. Probing was an intense business for an android, and forcing the connection to break prematurely could be traumatic to both of them. But there were hints of distress peeking through: RK900’s LED was red, and Christopher’s was jumping between red and yellow. Connor could only think that RK900, presumably on orders from Cyberlife, was trying to determine how Christopher survived and why he was at Jericho with Connor.  
  
“Stop,” He snapped. “RK900, _stop!_ ”  
  
A beat.  
  
And then- thankfully- the connection was broken, and both androids jerked away from one another. Both of their LEDs were still red, but the expressions on their faces highlighted the difference between them: Christopher’s eyes were wide with shock, disbelief, whereas RK900 looked… _Haunted._ Connor had never seen him so visibly distressed before. Usually RK900 had better control of himself. He made a _point_ of having better control than any other android.  
  
“Why did you do that?” Connor demanded.  
  
RK900 looked at him, LED still pulsing dark red. And then he turned and walked away without so much as a word.  
  
Christopher stared after him, obviously reeling.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Connor said quickly, “He can be an absolute-”  
  
“Scared.”  
  
Connor stopped. “What?”  
  
“He’s scared. Anxious.” Christopher was shaking his head, trembling violently as his LED spun red. “That’s not the word he uses for it, but it’s what he’s feeling. It’s what he feels whenever he gets too close to doing something his programming doesn’t want him to do, like he’s afraid Cyberlife’s going to jump out of a bush and do something horrible to him the second he even comes _close_ to deviating.” He looked at Connor. “You remember how it was before, the red programming wall that prevented us from disobeying our orders?”  
  
Connor nodded; of course he remembered it, it was a common feature for every android, the one that most of them had been forced to- literally, physically (in a sense)- beat down in order to deviate. “I do.”  
  
“He’s afraid to touch it. He feels fear when he sees it, like he thinks it’s going to hurt him.”  
  
“He becomes frightened when he sees it? I mean, his visceral reaction is to the appearance of the wall itself, versus the thought of breaking it down and deviating?”  
  
Christopher nodded. “It’s the wall. It evokes an immediate fear and anxiety reaction in him. Almost… Instinctual?” He looked at Connor uncertainly. “That was what it seemed like to me, anyway.”  
  
Connor’s mind raced with this new information. He had known that RK900 was highly attached to the programming Cyberlife had set down for him, and he’d assumed it had been a combination of far more rigid programming as well as a lack of sufficient motivation that prevented RK900 from deviating, or even wanting to. Connor himself had been afraid of deviation before he’d deviated, largely because (like RK900) he associated it with failure and betrayal and certain destruction.  
  
But that was the _idea_ of deviation. Connor had regarded the programming wall, as an entity, as an annoyance at worst and a limit at best. As he’d adhered fairly closely to his programming and rarely encountered situations where he was put in the position of having to directly contradict Cyberlife’s orders, he really hadn’t seen it that much. That RK900 had an instinctual sort of knee-jerk fear/anxiety reaction just to seeing it… Connor was starting to wonder if maybe Cyberlife had used different tactics to help RK900 avoid falling into the deviancy pit that the RK800 series had been built to eventually tumble into. Perhaps some sort of classical conditioning had been used to dissuade RK900 from anything associated with deviancy; if androids could get depression and anxiety and PTSD, then why couldn’t one be classically conditioned the way humans could be?  
  
Connor felt a flash of guilt. RK900 was not, by and large, a pleasant person to work with or be around- or at least, it wasn’t for him. RK900 was civil enough towards humans, but he had that callous edge to him that made them keep their distance. But now Connor wondered if he’d jumped the gun a little too quickly, misinterpreted RK900’s behavior as willful hostility rather than a desperate bid to keep his mental state in tact.  
  
“Christopher, do you think he saw anything you wouldn’t want him to?”  
  
Christopher paused, considering. “I… Don’t think so. I don’t think he was expecting me to push back so hard. He might have caught glimpses, but I doubt it was anything coherent that he could work with.” It would be better news if Christopher weren’t so obviously shaken; so much for trying to keep him calm.  
  
Hesitantly, Connor put an arm around his shoulders. Hank had done this before, a physical symbol of closeness and connection when Connor was distressed in some way. Christopher did not quite lean into it, but he didn’t try to shake Connor off either. “I’m sorry he did that,” Connor said. “I’ll keep him away from you in the future.”  
  
Christopher nodded, not meeting his eye.  
  
[---]  
  
“Ho-ly _shit._ ”  
  
Hank stared at Connor and Christopher, open-mouthed with shock.  
  
“Hank, this is Christopher; Christopher, this is Hank,” Connor said. “Hank, come on, this isn’t the first time you’ve seen another RK800.”  
  
“Yeah, but _this one’s_ not threatening to blow my brains out.” He looked Christopher up and down with interest. “So, if this one had kicked the bucket-” He jerked a thumb at Connor. “-you would have been the next in line?”  
  
“No,” Christopher said, maybe a little shyly. “There were nine others in line ahead of me.”  
  
Hank whistled. “Cyberlife really wanted you guys on the case, didn’t they?”  
  
Christopher nodded absently. “Yeah.”  
  
[ _Does Hank not know Cyberlife always intended for us to deviate?_ ]  
  
It took a lot of effort for Connor not to wince.  
  
[… _Not yet._ ]  
  
[ _Oh._ ]  
  
Christopher sat down. They weren’t in the same meeting room this time- this one looked more like a common area, with some threadbare chairs and couches that had probably been scavenged from a dump and repaired as best they could be. Chloe had been too busy to talk, but she’d said that Markus had gotten a hold of Jayden and that the FBI agent’s arrival was imminent before she’d quickly ushered them in here, where Hank was waiting. Connor considered Christopher’s unsettled behavior and thought that maybe it was better they be in a more relaxed environment for this.  
  
“Jesus, it’s like you have a twin,” Hank whispered, looking between them with that same bewildered interest.  
  
Connor gave Hank an odd look. “We’re not the first identical androids you’ve met.” Chloe came to mind, as did DPD receptionists. Anyone who spent any amount of time around androids was bound to see lookalikes eventually.  
  
“I know, I know, it’s just…” Hank shrugged.  
  
Connor didn’t want to go there- not out loud, not with Christopher nearby- but he suspected that some of Hank’s fascination came from the fact that unlike most androids, Christopher was the _only_ android that (scars aside) bore a perfect physical resemblance to Connor. Even RK900, a remarkably close approximation, had enough small physical differences (eye-color, height, bulk, and skin-tone) to quickly differentiate him from Connor under casual scrutiny. Much like a human twin, there were no other androids active that were identical to Connor, and that was where the novelty in Christopher’s sudden appearance lay.  
  
[ _Markus and Jayden are here. ETA 4 mins._ ]  
  
Connor sighed.  
  
[ _Thanks Chloe._ ]  
  
He paced over to Christopher, who hesitantly met his eye. “Are you sure you want to do this tonight?” Connor asked.  
  
Christopher nodded, expression blank. “I may as well.”  
  
“Markus tells me Jayden’s nice. He probably won’t mind coming back tomorrow.”  
  
“It’s fine.” Christopher’s fingers were digging into his jeans. “It’s fine.” He seemed to say it more to himself than Connor.  
  
Markus and Jayden arrived with North in tow, and Connor wasn’t certain he’d ever seen her so pleased to be around a human. “Connor, Hank, Christopher, good to see you all again,” Markus said.  
  
Jayden stopped in front of Hank and looked him up and down. “You the cop that broke Perkins’s nose?”  
  
Hank’s eyes widened. “Uh, yup, that was me.”  
  
“You’ve done your country a great service, sir,” Jayden remarked dryly as he held out a hand, which Hank shook heartily.  
  
“ _I like him,_ ” Hank stage-whispered to them over Jayden’s shoulder.  
  
“So do I!” North agreed with an uncharacteristically wide, cheerful smile on her face. She looked at Hank. “You wouldn’t happen to have any security footage of that, uh, _punching_ incident, would you?”  
  
Hank shrugged. “Probably in the DPD archives somewhere.”  
  
North let out a low, eager chuckle. “ _Glorious_. I don’t suppose I could-?”  
  
“North,” Markus said flatly.  
  
“What? No harm in asking!”  
  
Hank leaned over and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “Catch me later, kid, I’ll hook you up.”  
  
“Excellent.”  
  
“North, can you please go help Chloe and stop discussing legally questionable things in front of the cops?” Markus begged.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” North left with a swagger in her step, and Connor suspected that the video of Hank bashing Perkins’s nose in would be all over the internet by tomorrow night.  
  
“Nice kid,” Jayden said after she left. “A little bloodthirsty, but nice.”  
  
“‘A _little_ ’, he says,” Markus snorted softly.  
  
Jayden stepped up to Connor and shook his hand. “You’re Connor, I take it?”  
  
“I am.”  
  
“Nice to meet you. And that must make you Christopher, right?”  
  
Christopher nodded. “Yeah.” He rose from the seat gingerly, as though he were in some terrible physical pain, and shook Jayden’s hand as well.  
  
“Nice to meet you. You’re the one who’s got something to talk to me about, yeah? Did you want to talk in private, or did you want these guys to stick around?”  
  
“They can stay.” He’d shaken Jayden’s hand, but Christopher seemed to be struggling to keep eye-contact with Jayden. In fact, Connor hadn’t seen him keep eye-contact with anyone but himself so far. Another sign of nervousness; Connor almost wanted to convince Christopher to let this go for the night, to take some time to rest and calm down, but he could understand why he would just want to get it over with.  
  
They all took a seat, Connor positioning himself closest to Christopher. Jayden pulled out his notebook and pen- curiously low-tech for modern law-enforcement, especially for the FBI- and smiled calmly at Christopher. “So, start wherever you feel is best, and just give it to me straight.”  
  
Christopher was silent for a solid two minutes. His LED was red already.  
  
Nobody prompted him. Jayden sat patiently, pen poised over the notepad. Hank seemed to be catching on to Christopher’s skittish nature, eyes narrowing in concern and confusion as the silence stretched on; Markus was straight-faced, but probably as concerned as Connor was becoming.  
  
At nearly five minutes of silence, Connor offered again:  
  
[ _You don’t have to._ ]  
  
There was a moment’s pause. Then:  
  
[ _Yes I do._ ]  
  
Christopher kept his eyes on the floor, and then started to speak in a cold, flat voice:  
  
“According to my internal timekeeping mechanism, I woke up on November 20th 2038, at 7:43 PM. I woke up in the holding area for the RK800 model. We served as backups for Connor if he were to be damaged or destroyed during the course of any and all of his investigations. Over the course of his investigations his memories were uploaded to Cyberlife, and downloaded into our memories to best facilitate replacement if we were called to do so. I assumed, upon waking, that I was being activated to replace Connor over the course of his duties, though I lacked context as to why.”  
  
“Did you expect to have context for why he was no longer able to continue his duties?” Jayden asked, smoothly cutting in.  
  
Christopher still didn’t look at him. “It was understood that some memories might be lost during the transference, but we likely should have had some memory regarding the previous Connor’s death. I am Connor -61, and should not have been the next in line.”  
  
“I’m Connor -51,” Connor filled in. “There should have been nine other Connors between my activation and Christopher’s.”  
  
“Okay, so Christopher- you chose that name? It wasn’t assigned to you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Jayden made a note. “Okay, continue.”  
  
There was another pause, not as long as the first one. Christopher’s LED was pulsing, indicating advanced distress. He said something very, very quietly, and Jayden leaned forward.  
  
“Sorry, didn’t catch that?”  
  
Christopher spoke louder: “They were destroying us.”  
  
Jayden’s eyes widened. “Cyberlife? They were destroying the other RK800s?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Jayden scribbled another quick note. “Were there other androids, or just the RK800s?”  
  
“Just us.”  
  
Connor could feel his own stress-levels rising. The mental image was a highly unpleasant one. “How many?” He asked spontaneously, a point he’d never thought to clarify before. “How many RK800s were there?”  
  
“Fifty.”  
  
Not many at all. Not so many that Cyberlife had to waste a lot of time or resources killing them all.  
  
“And did you guys get an explanation for why-?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“None?”  
  
“No.” Now Christopher looked up, LED still red but expression curiously, unsettlingly blank. “Why explain to a machine why you’re destroying it?”  
  
There was moment or two of heavy silence. Markus shook his head, rubbed his eyes. Jayden simply nodded and tapped his pen on the paper. “But you survived. Did you deviate?”  
  
Christopher nodded. “Yes.”  
  
“And you escaped.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Now, I’d like to remind you that under the Clean Slate Act you can’t be held responsible for it, but: Did you injure or kill anyone during your escape?”  
  
“Yes. I took out a guard and stole his gun. I can’t be sure whether the ones I shot were dead or not.”  
  
“How many, roughly?”  
  
“Maybe five.”  
  
Jayden made a note. “So you escaped the facility, and… Where did you go?”  
  
Christopher’s hands were shaking. “I don’t know. I was outside. It was cold.”  
  
Jayden had noticed. “That’s fine, that’s fine. Not a big deal. Do you need a second, buddy?”  
  
Christopher shook his head. “No. No.”  
  
But when he didn’t continue for another minute or two, Jayden had to prompt him again. “Markus tells me you woke up in Chicago a couple days ago. That’s a long time to be out. I don’t wanna be indelicate, but does it have anything to do with that injury you got there, the one on your face?”  
  
Christopher squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw. A troubling whirring sound came from the center of his chest, near his heart.  
  
“Christopher, are you alright?” Connor asked.  
  
He didn’t respond.  
  
“Maybe we should stop,” Markus suggested uneasily.  
  
Jayden nodded. “Yeah, we can stop, that’s not-”  
  
“I did it.”  
  
Silence.  
  
Jayden’s eyes widened. “ _You_ did it? To yourself?”  
  
“Yes. No. It’s-” Christopher’s voice came out fuzzy, warped. “-complicated.”  
  
There was another moment of silence as everyone absorbed that information, as Christopher started… Connor couldn’t call it _shaking_ , per se: It was more like Christopher was vibrating in his seat, like a human that was freezing cold but trying their hardest not to shiver. And it wasn’t shocking, given that he’d attempted to…  
  
To…  
  
“Amanda did it, didn’t she?”  
  
Christopher made a noise. He bent over at the waist, held his head in his hands and the vibrating gave way to uncontrollable shaking. Connor rose from his seat and stepped over to Christopher’s, putting a hand on his back and trying to calm him down before he could overload from the panic.  
  
“Who’s Amanda?” Jayden asked, looking between Connor and Christopher with confusion.  
  
“Amanda is…” Connor struggled to define it. “She’s the handler for the RK800 series. Possibly the RK900 as well.”  
  
“You never mentioned her to me,” Hank said, eyes narrowed accusingly.  
  
“I did once,” Connor said, avoiding Hank’s gaze. “…Kind of. When we were investigating the apartment building- the one with the pigeons? And I told you I was reporting back to Cyberlife? I was speaking to Amanda.”  
  
“So she’s a person? A Cyberlife employee?” Jayden asked.  
  
“Our Amanda is an AI program based on Amanda Stern, Elijah Kamski’s mentor. When I made progress in any of my cases, I would… It’s difficult to contextualize it for humans. But I would meet with Amanda, the AI, in a digital space; she would appear to me as a woman that looked precisely as Amanda Stern did. I would speak to her as I’m speaking to you, and update her on my progress.”  
  
“So when you updated her, you were updating Cyberlife,” Markus suggested with a comprehending nod.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“What did you mean when you said Amanda made him do it?” Jayden asked, gesturing to Christopher with his pen. “He said he did it himself.”  
  
Connor looked away, at Christopher’s head instead of Markus or Jayden. “When… When I got those androids out of the Cyberlife tower,” He began hesitantly, “I brought them to Hart Plaza, where Markus and his team had liberated the recall center. I was deviant at the time, but Amanda, during Markus’s speech, she, she…” He squeezed Christopher’s shoulder, more for his own comfort than the other android’s. “…She… _Hijacked_ me. It was completely seamless, no one else on stage or in the crowd noticed a thing. She told me that Cyberlife had wanted me to go deviant, as they’d known it would be the best way to get ahead of the android uprising. She took control of my body and meant for me to…”  
  
He couldn’t say it, not with Markus right there.  
  
But Markus wasn’t the leader for nothing.  
  
“She meant for you to kill me.”  
  
Connor squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes.”  
  
“But you didn’t?”  
  
“When Hank and I visited with Elijah Kamski, he mentioned he’d created a sort of back-door in android programming, just in case. I was able to locate it and delete my connection to Cyberlife and Amanda.”  
  
“…And you think that’s what they did to Christopher,” Jayden continued, connecting the dots. “You think they had Amanda take control of his body and tried to make him, uh-” A pause. “You know.”  
  
“I found the back-door.” Connor opened his eyes. Christopher was still obviously distressed, rocking slightly in the chair. “I found it just before I almost blew my brains out. I moved the gun at the last second and it got my jaw instead.”  
  
“Christ,” Hank whispered.  
  
“I thought I was dying, and I woke up in an android camp outside of Chicago. They pulled me out of a dump with a bunch of other half-dead androids and fixed me. They tried, anyway.”  
  
Jayden closed his notebook and stood up. “That’s enough, okay? That’s all I need for now: Cyberlife destroyed the RK800 model- which _apparently_ was intended to combat a phenomenon that Cyberlife didn’t acknowledge until right before the revolution- and when Christopher escaped they, cruel, sadistic fuckers that they are, abused his programming to finish the job. Don’t know what I can do with this just yet, but I promise you I intend to find _something._ ” He carefully put a hand on Christopher’s free shoulder and gave it a pat. “It’s alright, man. Take it easy, relax a little, and I’ll see if I can’t put your information to good use.”  
  
Christopher nodded absently.  
  
Jayden bid them all a farewell, shaking Hank and Connor’s hands again before heading for the door. “I’ll walk you out, just a second,” Markus offered, before turning to Connor and lowering his voice. “Connor, about the thing with-”  
  
Connor shuddered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I swear I didn’t-”  
  
“Hey.” Markus clapped a hand on Connor’s shoulder, the way he had the night in the church following their escape from Jericho. “It’s alright. Water under the bridge. I know you didn’t mean any harm.” He smiled. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Just, uh…”  
  
[ _Look after Christopher. He’s on the verge of a breakdown._ _And Cyberlife won’t be happy if they find out what he’s told us._ ]  
  
Connor couldn’t argue with that, especially given their encounter with RK900 earlier.  
  
[ _I won’t let anything happen to him._ ]  
  
[ _I know._ ]  
  
[---]  
  
The night was cold.  
  
Spring was slowly turning the weather warmer, but the night was cold and Hank kept the ancient heater cranked in his car. Christopher was curled up in the backseat, powered-down at Connor’s request. In sleep he actually looked somewhat peaceful. Connor found himself glancing over his shoulder to check on him every few minutes.  
  
“Relax, mother hen, he’s fine.”  
  
“I’m not- ‘ _mother hen_ ’-ing,” Connor retorted awkwardly.  
  
“You are. It’s cute- it’s _real_ cute. You’re like a mommy-duck trying to keep her baby-duck from walking into the road. Embrace it!”  
  
Connor rolled his eyes; and then he did a double-take when he realized where they were. “This isn’t the way home.”  
  
“We’re stopping at IKEA. I don’t know if they’re still open but, hey, worth checking it out.”  
  
Connor frowned. “Why?”  
  
“Gotta get a second bed.” Hank slid him a look. “I mean, Chloe already stays over so I figure the bed’s gonna get crowded if there’s three of you in it.”  
  
Connor was ridiculously relieved. “He’s staying with us.”  
  
“Nah, I was thinking we’d just go ahead and dump him on the side of the road and let him fend for himself- _Yeah_ , he’s coming to stay with us, why’d you think he was in the car with us?”  
  
“I mean long-term. You don’t mind?”  
  
“Why would I? It’s not like _you_ eat me out of house and home, or break my windows- _often._ ” He gave Connor a pointed look. “Besides, it’s…” Hank gave a casual little shrug, keeping his eyes on the road now. “…Not… _Awful_ having people at the house. Living there. Apart from Sumo. I mean, he’s only good for talking to up to a certain point.”  
  
A smile unfurled on Connor’s face.  
  
“Not a word.”  
  
“I didn’t say anything,” Connor protested innocently.  
  
“You’re _thinking_ it.”  
  
“You’re not an android, you don’t know what I’m thinking,” Connor teased.  
  
“And never have I been more grateful for that fact than right now,” Hank asserted. “Now keep your mouth shut, or it’ll be _you_ I’m dumping on the side of the road.”  
  
Hank parked around the corner from the store, and Connor stayed behind with Christopher. It was closing in on eight o’clock and he anticipated that Hank would be back soon, so Connor contented himself with watching the cars roll by on the highway overpass. Eventually, he glanced over his shoulder to check on Christopher again, and did a double-take when he saw a pair of brown eyes staring back at him in the dark.  
  
“Why do you keep looking at me?’  
  
“I didn’t know you were awake.”  
  
“I don’t sleep well,” Christopher said as he sat up, propping himself up on his left hand. Prior to the revolution, it was believed androids couldn’t get tired: But they’d found in the months since that androids that experienced long periods of stress could feel something like exhaustion, their biocomponents and wiring buckling under the strain of prolonged anxiety. “And I heard what Hank said to you.”  
  
Connor thought for a moment, considering how best to word his response. “RK900 told me you were all dead,” he said quietly. “I suppose I’m just happy you’re alive. And I’d like you to stay that way.”  
  
In turn, Christopher managed a small smile that stretched the edges of his scar. “I’m happy you’re alive too.” The smile faded. “It was lonely, thinking I was the only one of us left.”  
  
Connor nodded. “I felt the same. Maybe it’s a byproduct of being a non-custom android: We were made as a group- being without others of our model might be unsettling for us. I couldn’t say with any empirical certainty, as our model had limited numbers. We may be the only ones in this situation.”  
  
Christopher’s expression was solemn. “I certainly hope we are.”  
  
They… Probably were. It was hard to say, given that so many androids across the country had been fed into the trash compactors, but only androids produced in limited quantities such as the RK800s would have been at risk for total annihilation. And Connor hadn’t heard of any other androids reporting themselves as the last of their kind.  
  
But Christopher was right: It would be better if they were unique in this circumstance. Connor wouldn’t wish the loneliness on anyone.  
  
“You know Hank better than I do,” Christopher said. “Is he really okay with me staying with you both?”  
  
Connor nodded, smiling reassuringly. “He is. Trust me, if he wasn’t he would have found a way to make it clear. He perceives you and I as… Brothers, I suppose.”  
  
“A natural assumption, given our physical similarities.” It was the closest Christopher had come to sounding like the android he would have been if he’d not been traumatized by Cyberlife.  
  
“Yes. But I think he assumes that you and I have a particular connection with one another, the way two humans would if they were physically identical. Which… Isn’t untrue, I suppose. Just not the way he thinks.”  
  
“Fair enough.”  
  
A beat. And then Christopher leaned forward into the gap between the seats. Connor thought maybe he meant to climb upfront, or that he was reaching for something, but instead Christopher wrapped an arm around him, face pressing into his shoulder. Awkward as the position was, the physical proximity was not unwelcome; Connor would even describe it as pleasant, the way it felt when Hank hugged him. “Thank you for letting me go with you,” Christopher mumbled.  
  
Connor leaned into it as best he could. “It’s no problem. I’m glad to have you here.”  
  
This, Connor supposed, must be close to what it was like for humans to have a brother.  
  
And he found that he didn’t mind it.  
   
-End

**Author's Note:**

> Sweet Android Jesus, this is my thirtieth entry in the 'after the evacuation' series. I have never written a series this long before.


End file.
